Comparison Study of Intraoperative Surface Acquisition Methods for Surgical Navigation

Abstract

Soft-tissue image-guided interventions often require the digitization of organ surfaces for providing correspondence from medical images to the physical patient in the operating room. In this paper, the effect of several inexpensive surface acquisition techniques on target registration error and surface registration error (SRE) for soft tissue is investigated. A systematic approach is provided to compare image-to-physical registrations using three different methods of organ spatial digitization: 1) a tracked laser-range scanner (LRS), 2) a tracked pointer, and 3) a tracked conoscopic holography sensor (called a conoprobe). For each digitization method, surfaces of phantoms and biological tissues were acquired and registered to CT image volume counterparts. A comparison among these alignments demonstrated that registration errors were statistically smaller with the conoprobe than the tracked pointer and LRS (p < 0.01). In all acquisitions, the conoprobe outperformed the LRS and tracked pointer: for example, the arithmetic means of the SRE over all data acquisitions with a porcine liver were 1.73 ± 0.77 mm, 3.25 ± 0.78 mm, and 4.44 ± 1.19 mm for the conoprobe, LRS, and tracked pointer, respectively. In a cadaveric kidney specimen, the arithmetic means of the SRE over all trials of the conoprobe and tracked pointer were 1.50 ± 0.50 mm and 3.51 ± 0.82 mm, respectively. Our results suggest that tissue displacements due to contact force and attempts to maintain contact with tissue, compromise registrations that are dependent on data acquired from a tracked surgical instrument and we provide an alternative method (tracked conoscopic holography) of digitizing surfaces for clinical usage. The tracked conoscopic holography device outperforms LRS acquisitions with respect to registration accuracy.

Accuracy analysis of line-based registration for image guided neurosurgery at different operating areas – a phantom study

“…The range of lines was similar to the range of lines shown in Figure 4(b). The TRE of LBR in [11] was different from the TRE of LBR in this study; this difference in TRE may be attributed to the use of different algorithms, which should be explored in further works. It should be noted that LBR is less time-consuming than PBR.…”

“…The accuracy of LBR is evaluated from TRE, which is measured by different methods in many studies; however, all these methods are based on the same principle. Recently, LBR was performed with a tracked pointer in cadaver organs, and the accuracy was 3.25 ± 0.78 mm [11]. Thus, the accuracy of LBR was same as the accuracy of single LBR in this paper.…”

Comparative Validation of Single-Shot Optical Techniques for Laparoscopic 3-D Surface Reconstruction

“…Based on a preliminary feasibility study [36], this work presented a comprehensive evaluation of the major state-of-the-art surface reconstruction techniques in vitro with a focus on (1) comparability of techniques and (2) robustness with respect to a variety of clinically relevant parameters, such as organ shape and texture, endoscope pose, as well as smoke and blood in the FoV of the endoscope. Previous works primarily validated individual techniques in close to ideal settings, and the few comparative validation studies were published in non-medical contexts [37] or in the context of open surgery [37], [38], [39]. The following sections discuss the performance of the individual reconstruction methods (sec: V-A) as well as the validation method applied (sec: V-B).…”

Can coffee improve image guidance?

“…To evaluate the results of the drilling experiment, a tracked conoscopic holography distance measurement device (ConoProbe Mark 3.0, Optimet Metrology Inc.) 17,18,19 was used to scan the inside of the cavity after the surgeon had completed the drilling. Since the calibrated ConoProbe was optically tracked using the same tracking system used by the surgeon for IGS, it is registered to anatomy in exactly the same way the surgeon's tools, enabling us to obtain high quality measurements of the drilled cavity.…”